This paper investigates the impacts of defined-benefit (DB) pension plans on the corporate investment choices between diversifying and non-diversifying investments. We find a firm’s DB plan coverage is negatively associated with its propensity of making a major investment. Subject to a major...

A country's growth of output is identically equal to its ratio of investment to output and the productivity of investment. In "new" growth theory regressions, which include the investment ratio, all other included variables pick up why the productivity of investment differs between countries....

This paper investigates the causal relationship between corruption and fixed capital investment in Russian regions. The panel data on corruption allow to control for unobserved heterogeneity with fixed effects estimation. We address the problem of endogeneity by introducing novel instrumental...

This paper investigates the impacts of large scale land investments on the health of children. I use household data of the 2005 and 2011 Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) for Ethiopia and combine them with information of large scale land investment projects provided by the Land Matrix...

A successful transformation to a carbon neutral energy system requires the correct investments in transmission and production capacity. In a zonal pricing electricity market, the one proposed by the European Commission to integrate the European electricity markets, I analyze the effects that...

We show that an increase in aggregate uncertainty - measured by stock market volatility - reduces productivity growth more in industries that depend heavily on external finance. The mechanism at play is that during periods of high uncertainty, firms that are credit constrained switch the...

The paper assesses the role of taxes on investment in Colombian firms. The analysis is carried out at the firm level for the period 2003-2014. During this period, the national government set five different tax reforms, including changes in the statutory tax rates, tax credits and incentives for...

Investment growth in emerging market and developing economies has slowed sharply since 2010. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the causes and implications of this slowdown and presents a menu of policy responses to improve investment growth. It reports four main results. First, the...

Existing empirical studies have focused on determinants of investment. We focus instead on episodes of accelerated capital stock growth that last eight years or longer. We find that episodes are relatively common, even in low growth regions, but more so in middle income and Asian countries....

This paper investigates the relationship linking investment (capital stock) and structural policies. Using a panel of 32 OECD countries from 1985 to 2013, we show that more stringent product and labour market regulations are associated with less investment (lower capital stock). The paper also...

This paper advances a novel hypothesis regarding the historical roots of labor emancipation. It argues that the decline of coercive labor institutions in the industrial phase of development has been an inevitable by-product of the intensification of capital-skill complementarity in the...

The last decade has witnessed an increase in the interest in agricultural land in developing countries. While a great deal of attention has been paid to understanding the impacts of this increased interest in agricultural land, very little is known about how local smallholder communities are...

In this paper we present an inter-temporal optimization problem of a representative R&D firm that simultaneously invests in horizontal and vertical innovations. We posit that learning-by-doing makes the process of quality improvements a positive function of the number of existing technologies...

This paper advances a novel hypothesis regarding the historical roots of labor emancipation. It argues that the decline of coercive labor institutions in the industrial phase of development has been an inevitable by-product of the intensification of capital-skill complementarity in the...

This paper examines the impact of investment in knowledge-based capital on firm productivity. The analysis is based on a dynamic econometric model estimated with micro-data from Ireland over the period 2006-2012. We use broad measures of investment in knowledge-based capital which include...

This paper examines the relationship between investment in innovation and productivity across firms in Ireland. We estimate a structural model using information from three linked micro data sets over the period 2005-2012 and identify the relationships between investment in innovation, innovation...

In September 2016, the European Commission (EC) published its proposal for a directive establishing the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) - with one key aim being the provision of sufficient incentives for infrastructure investments into high-speed communication networks. Based on a...

Cryptocurrencies have left the dark side of the finance universe and become an object of study for asset and portfolio management. Since they have a low liquidity compared to traditional assets, one needs to take into account liquidity issues when one puts them into the same portfolio. We...

This paper investigates profit-shifting behaviour among a large sample of multinational corporations (MNCs) in China. While profit-shifting behaviour is difficult to observe directly, it can be inferred from the behaviour of firms. That is the approach taken by Egger, Merlo, and Wamser...

Die hohen deutschen Leistungsbilanzüberschüsse werden heftig kritisiert. Als Erklärung wird unter anderem eine zu schwache Investitionstätigkeit in Deutschland angeführt. Dieser Zusammenhang ignoriert jedoch die Internationalisierung der Investitions- und Produktionsstandorte sowie...

This article shows that it can take a long period of time until research knowledge finds its application in practice and get disseminated as innovation trend. Factor-based investing is such an example. Having its developing roots in the nineties, it took more than two decades until this approach...

For the past nearly forty years, China has experienced average annual real GDP growth of close to ten percent, much of it driven by investment and capital accumulation. By 2014, gross capital formation had reached 46 percent of aggregate expenditures. This paper documents the role of investment...